


Bob the Blanket Fort Builder

by staticfiction



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, References to Depression, References to anxiety, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 21:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17875070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staticfiction/pseuds/staticfiction
Summary: on the nights you forget to breathe, he reminds you how.





	Bob the Blanket Fort Builder

 

It’s eleven in the evening on a Friday night, and despite your friends’ constant invitations to hang out, you’re in bed, in clothes you’ve been wearing since yesterday, feeling  _ nothing _ . Unless water rushing into your nose and your lungs burning is a feeling. There is that. You, fighting your way up to the surface too far to reach.

Some days are darker than others, and some nights are simply unbearable there is no room for anything else. These are the nights you slip out of bed, palm pressed against your lips to smother the unsolicited sobs from your throat. These are the nights your single bed feels too big and no amount of sprawling spread-eagle makes you feel any less small. Or less alone. On these nights, you break before your feet even touch the floor. But that’s where you are anyway, curled on the floor because you just can’t be bothered to move after your fall.

From the roof deck across the street, party music and laughter spills through your windows and pink light blinks into the cracks through your curtains. Not even hiding under the covers makes it better. All you can think is:  _ everything’s too bright and too loud _ . And all you want to do is  _ not be _ for just a little while. But a knock on your door pulls you out of these thoughts. A knock you choose to ignore because even just the thought of going  _ all the way over there _ is already  _ too much _ .

The knock comes again, insistent and determined, and somehow it reminds you of someone you know but your head is too fogged up to conjure a face to the memory. Then a voice filters through the sounds, calling out your name. A timbre so intimately familiar you recognize it even in the middle of the thunderstorms beneath your skin. You push yourself up on unsteady feet, balance yourself against the door, and take a breath. Because Sungjin is at the other side, and you  _ promised _ you will never let him see you break.

You crack the door open, just enough to let a line of light slip in. Enough to see Sungjin, in his white shirt, ripped jeans, battered sneakers, and hair the colour of midnight falling over his eyes. It takes one look at you for him to come to the conclusion, “You’re not okay, are you?”

“I’m fine.” You’re drowning, but you’re  _ fine _ .

His hands grip the straps of his guitar case tighter, suffocating the material inside his fist. “Stop telling me you’re okay when you’re not okay. What can I do for you?”

“Nothing,” you rush to answer. “I’m fine. Why are you here? You should’ve stayed behind with the others after your set.” It’s where he should be— where you really want to be but something inside you is just forcing you to be down— with his band and his friends, under the spotlight of the stage singing and strumming to his songs. With people who can make him laugh and laugh at his jokes. Not you. Not tonight when you’re barely human. When you’re trapped in a hurricane of your your own thoughts.

Sungjin tilts his head, his lips curling to the side. “I’d rather be with you. Can I come in?”

You press your palm flat against the door, ready to shut it in his face, but like the sun Sungjin shatters through the cracks in your defenses. He sets his guitar down and toes off his shoes. “It’s okay to need me.”

“No, it’s not.”

Sungjin blends into the shadows of your room and reappears after a minute with a tower of pillows and blankets in his arms. “Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s  _ not _ . Because even if the good days are really good, there will be bad days. And I will  _ need _ you and you’re going to take care of me and you don’t deserve that.  _ It’s not fair _ .”

Sungjin spreads the blankets and the pillows on the floor. “What I deserve or what’s fair or not,” he says, padding across the room and rummaging the bottom of your shoe rack, “that’s not for you to decide.” He takes a large beach umbrella, a staple for all your beach and summer festival trips and unfurls it at the edge of the bed of blankets he just made. Then he takes another set of sheets and drapes it over the frame, and over whatever surface he can tie the ends to. “This is where I choose to be. Even if you think it’ll hurt me, I can still love you.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I can,” he says, crossing the room to you. “I can still love you.”

“Don’t.”

He takes your face in his guitarist hands. The pads of his fingers are rough, but his touch is nothing else but brutally soft. “Too late. I already do.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“You make me feel like my singing can save the world. What part between now and then do you need reminding? Do I sound like I don’t know what I’m saying?”

_ Your voice can solve the global climate crisis _ , you said to Sungjin the day you met. By then you’ve had a little too much to drink and Brian was chasing you down the bar in an effort to keep you from embarrassing yourself. The rest of the night is now a blur, but you remember the moment you heard Sungjin sing, the moment you met his eyes from across the room, and the moment he smiled at you. Suddenly you were helpless in all the ways you’ve never been before. The good kind. The kind that made you wonder if risking your heart is truly worth it. But you had sailed across the ocean, dove in deep without a life vest when all you’ve ever known is stand at the edge of the water. All because the sun smiled at you and you fell apart.

The sun who is also a siren, whose singing lures you under the surface. When you forget how to breathe, his voice is the reminder. When the intricacies of feeling too much weigh you down like anchors at sea, his is the hand that pulls you out of the darkness you can’t escape. But you dare not burden him with this knowledge. He’ll try to fix you when you both know that only you can fix yourself. That only you can save you from the sea monsters in your head. But Sungjin will try. Because it’s in his nature to try. He’ll try so hard, and because he keeps running to you with sticky tape and glue every time you break your fins, you think to yourself: this time you’ll try harder. The bad days may seem endless, but the good days are always worth it. And you’ve had good days. Days so good, you remember thinking of all the good days you can still have. But tonight the voices are loud, but Sungjin’s singing is louder.

You lay together, with you tucked safe inside the invincible summer of his embrace. “I don’t know how to love you.”

“Just let me in when the days are bad,” he mutters into your hair. “I’ll never know what it’s like inside your head, but don’t shut me out. That would be enough.”

“You built a blanket fort around me. You’re already inside.”

“Well, I am Bob the Builder.” And the sun and the sky and the sea. “I can’t fix you. I know that. But I can be here. And when you’re ready to go out there again, we’ll do it together. I’m not going anywhere.”

_ Light of my life. My eternal sunshine _ .

One breath after another, and you can breathe again. And for now, that is enough.

 

 


End file.
